Chris B

It's called a wet microburst -- but when you see it on video like this, there's nothing "micro" about it. This time-lapse footage captured by Tucson photographer Brian Snider shows a microburst absolutely unloading on an area near the city. It seems as if a giant nozzle has been turned on in the sky, sending a blast of water straight down, which then quickly fans out (www.huffingtonpost.com) Mehr...

A Singapore Airlines plane has caught fire while making an emergency landing at Changi Airport. Flight SQ368 from Changi to Milan was two hours into its journey when the pilot reported engine problems and turned back towards Singapore. In a statement, Singapore Airlines said the plane’s right engine caught fire after it touched down at Changi Airport at around 6.50am. The blaze was put out by airport emergency services and there were no injuries to the 222 passengers and 19 crew on board.… (www.theguardian.com) Mehr...

The reason that it’s so rare to see footage like this is because there are simply not many of these planes around. Only 90 CL-415s were built and they’re not used on a continuous basis. As of this writing, we’ve only seen two of these water bombers in action from this vantage point. According to the description of the video, this took place in Portugal and the crew was getting water from Rio Douro. You can actually see them pass over a dam before dipping down and getting to work. (www.youtube.com) Mehr...

A Virgin Atlantic passenger jet was grounded after a botched ‘water cannon salute’ by airport fire tenders clogged up its engines by spraying thick foam instead of water. The water canon salute is the sort of flamboyant gesture for which Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic airline has become famous – and also marks something of a wider aviation tradition. The Virgin Atlantic plane – with its ‘Beauty Queen’ name emblazoned on the fuselage of the Airbus A330-300 - had just landed in Manchester… (www.dailymail.co.uk) Mehr...

An airport built with £250million from the ballooning foreign aid budget risks becoming a white elephant because it is too windy to land there safely, it was claimed yesterday. A royal opening at the airport on the remote island of St Helena has been postponed indefinitely after test flights raised safety concerns. The cliff-top landing strip was built with £250million from the Department for International Development to help boost the tiny island in the South Atlantic, which is Britain’s most… (www.dailymail.co.uk) Mehr...

A video shows the cable, stretched across the deck, slow down the E-2C Hawkeye plane as it prepares to land on the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier USS Dwight D Eisenhower. But then the wire swiftly breaks from the aircraft's tail hook and the plane continues down the flight deck before it frighteningly disappears. Only to reappear climbing out of trouble... (www.dailymail.co.uk) Mehr...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pizP-00lVLM The world’s shortest flight, a tiny hop between two remote British islands, celebrated Monday taking its millionth passenger on the route. The 2.7km (1.7-mile) flight between Westray and Papa Westray in the Orkney islands, off mainland Scotland’s northeast coast, holds the Guinness World Record as the shortest scheduled service.The flight, in an eight-seater Britten Norman Islander aircraft, officially takes two minutes but with favourable winds it can… (www.theguardian.com) Mehr...

An airport built with hopes of flying millions of passengers across America now boards a mere 16,000 a year - because nobody wants to go there. MidAmerica Airport, in Illinois, cost $313million and was originally planned to have 85 gates to load a heavy stream of flyers onto hundreds of flights a day. Now just two gates are needed at the busiest of times, with just four flights a week leaving the desolate runway near St Louis. (www.dailymail.co.uk) Mehr...